Posts on Jan 1970

ok me dears, I’m savouring the last few minutes of such delicious internet connections at the airport.. Then I’m offline for the next 10 days. Try not to break the internet while I’m gone. More episodes of in house gigs and singapore loaded when I’m back.

3 days 4 shows. It was forever when it lasted and oh so transient when it’s all over…because I am addicted to gig induced adrenalin highs and need to do it again.

Sofie and The Goat have already returned to Australia, and I’m packing for my trip to the inner regions of Jiu Zhai Gou (China)

Before that I’m soaking my legs in near boiling water and waiting for the aches to fade…

Of course, my dear minions, you are probably more interested in how the shows in Singapore went as opposed to the amount of lactic acid gathering in my joints…(which still makes for good conversation if you let me get into the gory details of things)

Ok Singapore. Sofie Loizou and I arrived in Singapore 3 days before to acclimatize and get our bearings on things. Winter loving spidey melted from the heat and was found guzzling flu preventing “horseshit tea” at every turn to keep her voice.

For those not in the know, horseshit tea is a chinese medicinal tea that is known as “ganmoucha” (directly translated…means flu tea which really works in preventing stress induced). Your royal madness only insists on calling it horseshit tea because it certainly smells like it.

Following photos are courtesy of Goat and Sofie Loizou. Your Royal Madness’ old camera is rendered nearly unusable since her batteries conked out and averages a total battery death of 5 pictures at every charge…

Pleasantly surprised to find that the Esplanade in Singapore has reserved a dressing room for us, complete with baths and toilets. Of course, back stage was a maze and spidey was hell afraid to get lost backstage…again. Which means that she is continuously trying to catch up with the crew to avoid getting permanently lost and becoming a back stage hobo.

Here’s a video courtesy of the goat.

The big poster boards are a surprise too. All this in the middle of the Central Business District area. Awesomeness

Then there’s this whole level of trying to gauge audience approval which is a whole new ball game when you are used to loud noisy minions back in Australia.

Thing is, playing to Singaporeans is well, different. It took a 2 runs for us to get past being spooked by the sheer pensiveness of the audience. No crazy minions screaming/ dancing nor do I feel safe telling everyone to “HAAAAAIL SATAN!!” Then, we kinda realised that the meer act of a listening crowd and flower offerings (minus the screaming I’m so used to in Australia) is, in itelf, a gentle compliment to your arts. Which is great, because I think this means a cosmic approval for spidey to eat the world with her music.

Grandness.

Then there’s feedback from offstage, which is a whole other level of trying to gauge if people are actually telling you that you suck gently, or that they are just genuinely concerned with trying to “improve” your shows by removing all artistic freedom. Comments include:

“Love your voice/ music, can you play more heavy metal stuff?”
“Love your voice/ music, can you do a set with less drums, they are so loud!!”
“Lenore’s Song is boring, can you play something else, I liked…er…what you call…Vandal. oh oh and can you do “You are Expendable”?
“Can you do Lenore’s Song today again?”
“Love You are Expendable (Solo piano), now can you do the one with guitars?”

And my all time favourite…

“Erhmm…can you give me your set list so I can arrange it for your band. Some parts are too quiet…I can make it more exciting”

Genuine concern yes. But it irritates the rebel in Spidey to no end. The band and I had a good laugh about it after the tears and the tantrum throwing backstage.

Humour… such a general cure for all things we do not understand. And in the end, we understood that these were all warped forms of compliments in one way or another since the overly zealous critics seemed to be returning for the music with bigger smiles each time. That was all we needed to see/ hear.